Project People

Mr. Amazing and I have always been "project people". Even when we were dating, we recovered a leather chair for his dorm room, made a sail for his sailboat,and refinished furniture for my first apartment.

I'm not really sure where this love for re-doing things came from because neither of our parents are what I would call "project people". My mother had vision, and if she had been married to someone like my husband, she just might have gotten addicted to projects too.

And even though my father-in-law wasn't really a "project person" either, he did give his son the confidence that he could do anything he set his mind to. My father-in-law was a jack-of-all-trades and taught both of his sons to be also.

Our wedding was filled with projects. Mr. Amazing even made the kneeling bench and all the candelabra flanking the aisle. I always remind him that he knew what he was getting into from the very beginning.

One thing that I think really developed us into the project people that we are, is our first house. We bought our first house at the age of 21 and it was not our dream home. More like a nightmare. Other than the price, there wasn't one thing that we liked about the house. I'm not sure what we were thinking.

But for as bad as it was, what that first house taught us was worth a fortune. When you start with something as bad as it was, you aren't afraid that you are going to mess it up. We learned about load-bearing walls (oops), sub floors (and why you want one), and plugged septic tanks.

I also learned that living in a house while dry walling it is not something that I really ever want to do again.

Here are some before and after pictures from that house. Now remember this was 1980 when we did this, so you young people out there stop laughing at our redos...

The kitchen before...

Wow! Check out Mr. Amazing's hair...

The kitchen after!

The bathroom before:

The bathroom after!

By the way, I made this shower curtain out of a sheet. So if you are having trouble finding just the right shower curtain, go look in the sheet department.

Do you consider yourself a project person?